TigerHawk

TigerHawk (ti*ger*hawk): n. 1. The title of this blog and the nom de plume of its founding blogger; 2. A deep bow to the Princeton Tigers and the Iowa Hawkeyes; 3. The nickname for Iowa's Hawkeye logo. Posts include thoughts of the day on international affairs, politics, things that strike us as hilarious and personal observations. The opinions we express are our own, and not those of each other, our employers, our relatives, our dead ancestors, or unrelated people of similar ethnicity.

Sunday, May 27, 2012

A few more pictures from Lisbon

By TigerHawk at 5/27/2012 08:34:00 PM

The Son and I had a great day exploring the city, visiting numerous museums, centers of erstwhile ecclesiastical importance, and drinking the grape, fortified and otherwise. We also took in Fado, and rode an elevator. Along the way, we took a few pictures.

Saturday, May 26, 2012

A few pictures from Lisbon

By TigerHawk at 5/26/2012 07:52:00 PM

I am to be in Amsterdam for business next week, but determined that I could cut the air fare by more than half if I went through Lisbon, where I had never been. Bonus savings in hand, I brought along my son and occasional co-blogger for a long weekend in a great city. A few pictures of the day follow.

One must not leave America too quickly, especially after a long flight over night...

We spent most of the afternoon at the Castelo de Saint Jorge, which, as any good fortress should, dominates the city.

Sunday, May 20, 2012

The lobbying ban and the concentration of power

The Washington Post has an interesting story about the extensive activity of lobbyists at the White House, and is fairly up front in noticing the discontinuity with Barack Obama's campaign promises:

More than any president before him, Obama pledged to change the political culture that has fueled the influence of lobbyists. He barred recent lobbyists from joining his administration and banned them from advisory boards throughout the executive branch. The president went so far as to forbid what had been staples of political interaction — federal employees could no longer accept free admission to receptions and conferences sponsored by lobbying groups.

“A lot of folks,” Obama said last month, “see the amounts of money that are being spent and the special interests that dominate and the lobbyists that always have access, and they say to themselves, maybe I don’t count.”

The White House visitor records make it clear that Obama’s senior officials are granting that access to some of K Street’s most influential representatives. In many cases, those lobbyists have long-standing connections to the president or his aides. Republican lobbyists coming to visit are rare, while Democratic lobbyists are common, whether they are representing corporate clients or liberal causes.

Commentary

Corporate tool that I am, I do not blame the lobbyists or the interests that commission them. When government at one level or another accounts for 30% of GDP, it is a huge source of business and regulation that any executive ignores at his or her peril. The extent of lobbying, therefore, is in direct relationship to government's intrusion in to the economy, and since this government has intruded more than any predecessor going back at least to the first half of the Carter Administration, lobbying has no doubt grown notwithstanding Barack Obama's stated ambition.

The question, of course, is whether this president's promises and bureaucratic steps to "change the political culture" are ingenuous, or cynical. If one were to search high and low for an argument in favor of cynicism, one might make the point that the various "reforms" enacted by President Obama tend to shift the target of lobbying from federal agencies and Congress to the White House itself. That has the fairly obvious effect of concentrating lobbying around the president, maximizing his ability to extract political benefit from the quotidian decisions of the federal government.

Of course, maybe I'm just cynical.
CORRECTION: Per commenter "Anon Attorney," aggregate federal, state, and local government spending is now 40% of GDP. I forgot about the local part.

Tuesday, May 15, 2012

I'm very busy and fairly tired

By TigerHawk at 5/15/2012 10:29:00 PM

I am very busy and fairly tired, and no longer have the time to blog properly. On the small chance that you have not already noticed. That said, I will still pop in reasonably often with small thoughts and news from the front, so check in occasionally. One day, I'll have more time and I will be less tired, and I will return with the force of this blog's glory days, now a couple of years back.
Just thought I should write that out loud.

Saturday, May 12, 2012

Young Women for Change

By Aegon01 at 5/12/2012 01:11:00 PM

I went to school with an Afghani girl named Noorjahan Akbar who leads a group called Young Women for Change. Their goal is essentially to educate men to have respect for women, allow women to dress the way they want to, and to end street harassment. Recently she got a huge spot on an Al Jazeera program that talked about Sahar Gul, a 15 year-old girl who was forced into a marriage and tortured. Noorjahan has been visiting this girl frequently and giving her emotional support.

Please donate or just send good vibes to Young Women for Change. It's an exceptionally worthy cause.

UPDATE: Noorjahan sent me a Facebook message saying that their primary goals are to end torture and rape, and to get women into schools. The dress code is mandatory and isn't on their priorities list.

Sunday, May 06, 2012

tellerspulenvermeidenklositzfreude

By Andrew Hofer at 5/06/2012 09:02:00 AM

Over on Facebook my friends and I have been proposing the appropriate term for a medical condition or psychological disorder that leads my 12 year-old to have violent bathroom urges at the moment he is asked to wash the dishes. I used to be accused of this myself, and later in life I found the Sterling library stacks had the same effect on me. Here are some of the proposals:

Saturday, May 05, 2012

The disappearing genius

Wednesday, May 02, 2012

What sea ice anomaly?

By TigerHawk at 5/02/2012 02:03:00 PM

In what will be comforting news for those of you worried that the warm winter in the United States reflects anthropogenic global warming (and discomforting news for those of you who worry that we are all just complacently burning fuel to our doom), the area of the planet covered by sea ice is again over the mean for the satellite era, defined as 1979-2008:

Tuesday, May 01, 2012

Keystone: Even the editors of the Washington Post support its approval

By TigerHawk at 5/01/2012 11:29:00 PM

We know the president is to the left of the American center, because on one of the totemic regulatory questions of the year he is to the left of the editors of the Washington Post, who are themselves to the left of center. A fortiori leftyness, as it were. Anyway, the political argument appears in the excerpt below; the economic and technical arguments are behind the link.

Even if environmentalists manage to stop one pipeline or another, given high world oil prices, the enthusiastic support of the Canadian government, the many transport options and the years available to develop infrastructure, it’s beyond quixotic to believe that enough of the affordable paths out will be blocked. Environmentalists might succeed, however, in relocating some construction jobs outside the United States.

So President Obama’s refusal so far to authorize Keystone XL has little rational basis. (emphasis added)

Barack Obama's obstinacy is irrational as a matter of public and economic policy, perhaps, but if the people who oppose the pipeline are more passionate and organized than its supporters, it may be very rational politics. And the WaPo editors know that, even if they do not say so.

For those of you watching from home, the Post is essentially saying that Barack Obama is either irrational or a cynic. The former is not hopeful, and the latter is not a change.